As universities scramble to write rules for artificial intelligence in the classroom, a fundamental question remains unknown: How many students are actually using it?
An anonymous survey of 338 University of Chicago undergraduates shows that the answer can be difficult to pin down — not only because the use of AI is evolving rapidly, but also because students aren’t accurately reporting it themselves.
In the survey, 60% of students reported personally using AI tools like ChatGPT. But 90% said they think the average student on campus uses AI.
This 30-point gap could mean that students underestimate their own use of AI, overestimate that of their peers, or both. Without reliable information about how many students are using AI and how they are using it, college administrators risk designing policies based on assumptions rather than evidence.
The University of Chicago researchers behind the survey suspect that students are not telling the truth about their actual use of AI because they are ashamed.
“Students don’t want to be seen by their peers as incapable of doing the work,” said Alex Kale, a computer scientist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study. studywhich was presented at a conference in Barcelona, Spain, in April. “They don’t want to be seen by their peers as dishonest…And it feels deeply personal to them.”
Kale calls this phenomenon “social desirability bias,” the human tendency to answer questions in a way that makes us look good to others (and to ourselves), rather than being completely honest, even in an anonymous survey. In a separate online survey the researchers conducted with 98 undergraduate students, respondents said that admitting to using AI was like admitting that you’re “not capable of completing your courses independently” or that you’re “lazy.” Another respondent believed that students hid their drinking for fear of being caught and possibly expelled.
The researchers offer another explanation for this discrepancy. Students may be overestimating how many of their peers are using AI because it is a highly visible part of campus life. They hear people talking about ChatGPT. They see AI tools open on laptop screens. This may start to feel like the norm. One survey respondent put it this way: “I think only a small portion of students actually rely on LLMs to complete their courses, while most students do not. This small portion leads some students to assume that most use them.” (The current generation of post-2022 AI tools like ChatGPT are often called large language models or LLMs.)
In other words, students may be using AI more than they admit, while the hype around AI may also make it seem like everyone is using it.
This same phenomenon – a significant gap between what students admit to doing and what they believe their peers are doing – is commonly found in public health research on alcohol, drugs And sex. College students often overestimate how much their peers drink, use drugs, or have casual sex. And this has had big implications in combating unhealthy behaviors. When students believe that “everyone is doing it,” they are more likely to engage in it as well. The false perception becomes partly self-fulfilling.
More than 25 years ago, universities began to worry that warning students about excessive drinking on campus was backfiring and actually encouraging students to get drunk. A lot offbeat strategydownplaying the problem of excessive drinking and publishing statistics that most students drink in moderation. The number of students reporting heavy drinking has declined, according to some public health officials.
There may be some lessons here about how to encourage responsible use of AI, even if the University of Chicago study does not link AI use to drugs or alcohol. But it does raise the point that perceptions matter. If students think that almost everyone relies on AI to complete their courses, they may feel pressured to use it themselves just to keep up.
Kristin Fasiang is a graduate student in computer science and learning sciences at Northwestern University. Fasiang reported and wrote this story with Jill Barshay of the Hechinger Report.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about the use of AI on college campuses was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization that covers education. Register for Proof points and others Hechinger Newsletters.
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